A new Timaru youth collective has dropped in and is looking to grind down youth boredom levels with a skateboarding event these school holidays.
The He Manawa Tītī Youth Trust is launching its first major event, Skate-O-Rama, on October 4 at the Caroline Bay skatepark.
The day is open to anyone of school age and will run from 11am to 2.30pm.
There will be free food, music, a lot of skating and scootering.
The event will finish up with a competition and prizes will be given away.
Trust founder Jared Pratt moved to Timaru from Tauranga 18 months ago and noticed a big gap in youth activities.
‘‘There are some great sport programmes and some great drama programmes but there isn’t a lot if you’re not into either of those.
‘‘I started doing some youth mentoring at schools around town and quickly realised there is sometimes not a lot going on for young people.’’
From there Mr Pratt decided to form the youth trust and began running a few smaller events.
The trust started running a monthly Saturday night event at the AMPSS101 building where children could hang out in a supervised and safe environment.
‘‘We have year 6 to year 9 kids coming.
‘‘There’s a pool table, games and all sorts.
‘‘Myself and other volunteers supervise the night and the kids can get up to what they like it’s just an open space.”
The response so far had been great.
‘‘They seemed to like that it wasn’t just a set programme.
‘‘There’s a lot of organisations here that do great work in the youth space but the main thing I was hearing back was the kids just wanted somewhere to go, hang out and just do their thing.
‘‘We want to create a community, create friendship and create belonging without having to sign up to a course.’’
He wanted to crack on and start trying to fill that gap.
‘‘I’m much more of a doer than an administrator.
‘‘We just want to get in and do stuff.
‘‘I don’t have the definitive answers, I’m just doing what I can.’’
The idea of the skate event came about because of his work in schools.
‘‘There were a few skaters at school.
‘‘They said there had been a few events in Temuka that they had enjoyed so I thought that would be a good way of engaging young people.
‘‘It gets them outside and doing something physical.
‘‘There are no rules to skateboarding — you can get out there, do what you like and express yourself.’’
He was looking forward to the event and hoped the community would get behind it.
‘‘There’s a real feeling from the people of Timaru who have grown up here that know there is often not much to do as a kid.
‘‘So I think there has been a real groundswell of community spirit behind what we are doing and I hope that continues.’’
The trust hoped to be able to continue running events every school holidays.
